Bethany Lee McLean (born December 12, 1970) is an American journalist and contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine. More than 100,000 people already have died in this country from the virus. If private equity is handed billions in taxpayer money, it could use some of it to pay themselves hefty fees today, then pocket even more of it down the road, when they sell their portfolio companies and collect their 20% of the taxpayer-enabled gains. Portfolio, a Penguin Random House imprint, announced Wednesday that the two had reached an agreement for a news-breaking, character-driven narrative revealing the forces that rendered critical American institutions ill-equipped to cope with the deadliest pandemic since the 1918 Spanish flu and the economic consequences of that failure.The title and release date have not yet been determined. She has been married to Sean Murray Berkowitz since May 2008. Occidental is just one piece of the puzzle. She is known for her writing on the Enron scandal and the 2008 financial crisis. COVID-19 Guidance for isolation and quarantine, COVID-19 Education and Outreach Materials Page. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. The industrys lack of profits wasnt exactly a secret. Mnuchin is a former Goldman Sachs executive and hedge fund guy; Blackstones Schwarzman has ties to Trump; Jared Kushners family business has gotten loans from Apollo, according to the Washington Post. Otherwise, the ILPA warned in a previous letter, there would be significant harm not only to employees that see their hours reduced or jobs eliminated, but also significantly reduced returns to the institutions providing retirement security through pensions, insurance policies and other investments that serve hundreds of thousands of Americans. To make matters worse, ILPA added, provisions in many private-equity investments allow private-equity firms to make additional capital calls when times are tough. Exclusive: Inside the S--tshow That Was the Trump-Biden Transition. The taxpayer handouts will also help private equity continue its relentless march through the global economy, snapping up troubled companies at bargain prices or extending high-priced credit as other investors, including hedge funds, are forced to sell off their holdings in the post-corona landscape. Increasingly desperate to boost the portfolios of retiring workers, they too turned to private equity as their saviorurged on by private equitys promises that it alone could deliver the necessary returns. Recent and archived work by Bethany McLean for The New York Times. If you need help with the Public File, call 540-512-1558. A loophole in the tax code currently allows private-equity financiers to pay taxes on their returns at the lower rate for capital gains, rather than the higher rate for personal income. A hydraulic fracturing site in Denton, Texas. We could close that, once and for all. A deal, and higher oil prices, might help the industry. sure to go down in history as one of the wildest business stories ever. She has suggestions for how to approach the problem. today. Here are some tips. The typical fee structure in private equity is the so-called 2 and 20, which means that a fund collects a fee of 2% of the total assets it manages, as well as 20% of any gains on its investments after a certain return is achieved. Looking for more? Even so, he told me, a large number of private-equity firms ignored that guidance and decided to put very high levels of leverage on their portfolio companies. Maybe those firms should now be required to contribute more equity from their cash stockpiles, he suggests. On the other hand, Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and powerful Representative Maxine Waters, have weighed in loudlyon the industrys behalf. In May 2008, she married attorney Sean Berkowitz, the former Director of the United States Department of Justice Enron Task Force. Paying members will get access to perks like a. by Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos, and much more. on March 2.Read more about the C.D.C . The industrys $1.5 trillion in cash on hand is also the highest on recordand more than double what it was five years ago, according to Preqin. Private equity, of course, came of age in the 1980s, when greed was good and private-equity titans like KKRs Henry Kravis first burst into the limelight by taking over famed American manufacturers like RJR Nabisco. Daily updates from Washington, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley. Copyright 2023 Click2Houston.com is managed by Graham Digital and published by Graham Media Group, a division of Graham Holdings. After Enron's rapid collapse later in 2001, McLean co-authored the book The Smartest Guys in the Room (2003) which detailed the corrupt business practices of Enron officials. And why not? Jack Ewings Faster, Higher, Farther is more than the story of a scandal. As a result, the stocks that make up the S.&P. The half decade from 2013 to 2018 saw the most private-equity deals over any five-year period in American history. Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Career Not only should taxpayer funds not be used to pay management or consulting firms, she says, but companies that take the money should also, for instance, be required to include workers on their corporate boards and gradually increase their minimum wage to at least $15 an hour. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer), Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. NEW YORK Business writers Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera are collaborating on a critical take of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Moodys, the rating agency, said that in the third quarter of 2019, 91 percent of defaulted U.S. corporate debt was due to oil and gas companies. I dont think any of us can really believe what we saw today, one industry analyst told AP. Policymakers who wanted to tout energy independence disregarded all this, even as investors were starting to lose patience. Whats more, the Milken Institute reported, even by mid-2018, private equity owned more companies than the number of businesses listed on all of the U.S. stock exchanges combined, and have accounted for a more significant source of financing than initial public offerings in many recent years. The fracking boom that drove a decade of record U.S. oil and gas production was never really profitable to begin with. Some of it has been packaged into so-called collateralized loan obligations, pieces of which are held by hedge funds. They have two children. And more! TDD: (800) 526-0844 Workers monitoring a hydraulic fracturing operation near Wink, Texas. All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis is a nonfiction book by authors Bethany McLean and Joseph Nocera about the 2008 financial crisis. Deaths, active cases . [16] McLean resides in Chicago with her children. Its essential that we do the same today. McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and co-author of the Enron book The Smartest Guys in the Room. The book was later made into the Academy Award-nominated documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. As a group of scientists who study virusesexplains, Theres no reason, at least biologically, that the virus wont continue to evolve.From a different angle, the science writer David Quammen surveys some of the highly effective tools and techniques that are now available for studying Covid and other viruses, but notes that such knowledge alone wont blunt the danger. When will the pandemic end? It is absolutely imperative, Waters recently wrote in support of private equity, that the reliefbe extended to protect all workers, irrespective of the affiliations of their employers. Translation: Workers shouldnt suffer just because their bosses sold a controlling stake in their businesses to a bunch of greedy fat cats. He and McLean previously worked together on All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis, about the 2008 market crash. Dont hesitate: sign up on Patreon today. Veuer's Tony Spitz has the details. Bethany College will continue to adapt and collaborate as needed to encourage vaccines and boosters for staff and students. How exactly did the alleged illegal activity go down? (Adila Mchich, CME Group), Fractivism: Corporate Bodies and Chemical Bonds (Sarah Ann Wylie), The Fracktivists (Colin Kinniburgh, Dissent), Kate: A Moderate Proposal: Nationalize The Fossil Fuel Industry (The New Republic), This week, Kate and Daniel talk to Bethany McLean, author most recently of, Saudi America: The Truth about Fracking and How Its Changing the World, The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, If you like the episode and want to hear more, sign up as a monthly member at. [1] It details how the financial crisis bubbled up from a volatile, and bipartisan, mixture of government meddling and laissez-faire. Dylan Hollingsworth for The New York Times. The industry also quietly helps itself to yet more money by having portfolio companies pay fees for consulting and financing services provided by, of course, their private-equity backers. Infuriatingly enough, the financial crisis in 2008 might even have saved private-equity firms from their sins. Rasmussen points out that after the financial crisis in 2008, the Federal Reserve set a limit on the amount of debt it considered prudent. Like so many other facets of the COVID-19 crisis, however, this unprecedented crash exposed long-running cracks in the facade. In 2019, Mclean launched a podcast titled Making a Killing on Luminary. The community level of Covid-19 in McLean County is low based on cases and hospitalizations, according to the most recent update from the C.D.C. Archive Wall Street Too Big to Fail, COVID-19 Edition: How Private Equity Is Winning the Coronavirus Crisis April 9, 2020 From the. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories. Coronavirus May Kill Our Fracking Fever Dream, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-texas-fracking-layoffs.html. As a result, fracking stocks badly underperformed the market. One is the so-called Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), set up to make $349 billion in government-guaranteed loans available to businesses with fewer than 500 employees. The reason is as simple as it is galling: while great private fortunes, such as that of Blackstones Stephen Schwarzman (net worth: $17.5 billion and Apollos Leon Black ($7.5 billion), have been made from private equitys march through the world, its losses, to a remarkable degree, will belong to all of us. NEW YORK Business writers Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera are collaborating on a critical take of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. The Wuhan Institute of Virology, the cutting-edge . So if Blackstones investments crater, the teachers, firefighters, and health care workers who are counting on those investments to generate the returns necessary to pay their pensions will suffer. The big banks emerged from the financial crisis victorious, but also subject to a host of new regulations designed to reduce leverage and stabilize the economy. At least 1 in 303 residents have died from the coronavirus, a total of 2,512 deaths. On March 10, Scott Sheffield, the chief executive of Pioneer Natural Resources, a major driller in the Permian Basin, told Bloomberg that U.S. oil output could fall by more than two million barrels per day by next year if prices remain where they are today. The man who shot his girlfriend and five relatives at a birthday celebration had "control issues". The Next Financial Crisis Lurks Underground, Coronavirus May Kill Our Fracking Fever Dream. He and McLean previously worked together on All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis, about the 2008 market crash. Bethany McLean, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, is the author of "Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World." The Times is committed to publishing a. Bethany McLean is a Vanity Fair contributing editor. By Bess Levin . You can see how all of this is playing out by looking at Occidental Petroleum. What could endemic Covid look like? [1] In 1992 she received a B.A. Private equity financiers typically get a 2 percent management fee on funds they can raise, so they are incentivized to take all the money that pension funds, desperate for returns to shore up their promises to retirees, have been willing to give them. By Patrick Semansky/AP Photo (Mnuchin); By Mark Wilson (Pelosi), Jason Alden (Shwarzman), Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg (Black), by Johannes EISELE/AFP (stocks), by Christina Horsten (tents), by John Nacion (ambulance); All from Getty Images. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. These cookies are used to collect information on how users interact with Chicago Booth websites allowing us to improve the user experience and optimize our site where needed based on these interactions. The active outbreak list is intended to inform the public of the current COVID-19 outbreaks in Los Angeles County. Ms. McLean is the author of Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How Its Changing the World., Ever since the oil shocks of the 1970s, the idea of energy independence, which in its grandest incarnation meant freedom from the worlds oil-rich trouble spots, has been a dream for Democrats and Republicans alike. All rights reserved. Getting the government out of the housing market would mean saying goodbye to the 30-year mortgage. She has co-authored multiple bestselling books, including The Smartest Guys in the Room and All the Devils Are Here. The socio-economic status of individuals needing . If you like the episode and want to hear more, sign up as a monthly member at patreon.com/hotbotheredclimate today. They subprimed the American energy ecosystem, says a longtime energy market observer. Blame Congress for the meltdown, not Goldman Sachs. David Wallace Wells writes that by one estimate. Paying members will get access to perks like a monthly happy hour with Kate, Daniel, and friends, a free ebook of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal by Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos, and much more. Whiting Petroleum, whose stock once traded for $150 a share, filed for bankruptcy. Americas largest public pension plan, the California Public Employees Retirement System, or CalPERS, put almost $7 billion into private equity during the 2018-2019 fiscal year, according to Institutional Investor. Bethany McLean was born on 12 December 1970 in Hibbing, Minnesota, USA. Traders last year at the New York Stock Exchange near the post that trades Anadarko Petroleum and Occidental Petroleum. Investors were willing to do this only as long as oil prices, which are not under Americas control, were high and when they believed that one day, profits would materialize. McLean was born in Hibbing, Minnesota on December 12, 1970. By now, it should be abundantly clear that the current shale oil business model does not work even for the very best companies in the industry, the investment firm SailingStone Capital Partners explained in a recent note. NEW YORK Business writers Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera are collaborating on a critical take of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. Since that time, Oxys stock has plummeted almost 80 percent in part due to fears that the Anadarko acquisition is going to prove so wildly unprofitable that it sinks the company. These firms not only have a record $1.5 trillion in cash on the sidelines, waiting to be invested, but their CEOs are among Americas richest executives. Well continue to work with the administration and Congress to request that federal programs support all businesses, regardless of ownership structure, and their workers, says the AICs CEO, Drew Maloney. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. By signing up you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. Bethany McLean is a Vanity Fair contributing editor. in English and mathematics from Williams College. On March 10, the company announced that it would slash its dividend for the first time since the early 1990s, when Saddam Husseins invasion of Kuwait sent oil prices plummeting. Ad Choices. This week, Kate and Daniel talk to Bethany McLean, author most recently of Saudi America: The Truth about Fracking and How Its Changing the World as well as the bestselling The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, with Peter Elkind. All rights reserved. Get COVID-19 vaccine updates from the CDC. We really need Trump to do something or hes going to lose all the energy states in this election, Mr. Sheffield told CNBC in late March. The value of West Texas Intermediate crude, a U.S. benchmark, dipped below zero for a few hourstrading as low as negative $40 a barrel. This week, Ms. McLean begins promoting her new book, "All the Devils are Here," about the current financial crisis. This week, Kate and Daniel talk to Bethany McLean, author most recently of Saudi America: The Truth about Fracking and How It's Changing the World as well as the bestselling The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, with Peter Elkind. McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and co-author of the Enron book The Smartest Guys in the Room. Nocera is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and co-author of Indentured, about the NCAA. The problem is, existing rules at the Small Business Administration, which is overseeing the program, have been widely interpretedas excludingloaning money to most mom-and-pop businesses that are controlled by large parent companiesincluding private-equity firms. 1 FOR PHARMACISTS PRESCRIBING PAXLOVID: This service is available in all locations, with the exception of those in New Hampshire. Free COVID-19 testing is available at the McLean County Health Department from 9 a.m. to noon every Tuesday and Wednesday in Room 400E of the MCHD building at 200 W. Front St. in Bloomington. In the Season One finale of Making A Killing, Bethany brings back her friend, colleague and co-author Joe Nocera (Bloomberg Opinion columnist and creator of The Shrink Next Door podcast) to bookend the season with a lively analysis of the former head of Nissan Motor Co. and Renault S.A., Carlos Ghosn. In 2019, Oxy, as its known, topped a competing bid from Chevron and paid $38 billion to take over Anadarko Petroleum, which is one of the major shale companies. She co-authored a book on the 2008 financial crisis titled All the Devils Are Here. Bill White wants to restore Americas historical proclivity for balanced budgets. FILE - In this Friday, June 12, 2020 file photo, a nurse uses a swab to perform a coronavirus test in Salt Lake City. More than 100,000 people already have died in this country from the virus. The 42 Best Romantic Comedies of All Time, The 25 Best Shows on Netflix to Watch Right Now. No food or drink for one hour prior to testing. All thats left to tally is the damage. Bethany McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of "Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World." The Power Law Venture Capital and the . Given how much of the economy will rise and fall on the investments that private-equity funds manage, we may be forced to let them share the federal handout. On April 20, oil prices did something theyve never done before. Nocera is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and co-author of Indentured, about the NCAA. If private equity suffers, the blow will reverberate throughout the entire economy. After nearly bringing down the economy in 2008, how is it possible that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still around? This kind of rewrites the economics of oil trading.. Its still unclear where most of this debt is held. "Dow 36,000" co-authors stand by book's premise. Monday - Friday The industrys total assets under management have hit a record $4.1 trillion. Months into the outbreak, no one really knows how well many of the screening tests work, and experts at top medical centers say it is time to do the studies to find out. As early as 2018, some investors had begun to tell companies that they wanted to see free cash flow, and that they were tired of compensation models that rewarded executives with rich paydays for increasing production, but failed to take profits into account. BLOOMINGTON A total of 208 new COVID-19 cases have been reported by the McLean County Health Department from Jan. 27 through Friday. The SHIELD saliva-based testing is available for all ages. McLean is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and co-author of the Enron book "The Smartest Guys in the Room." Nocera. Think of private-equity firms as the banks of the corona crisis: They are, for better or worse, too big to fail. Which explains why ILPA wrote to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell last week, arguing that companies backed by private equity should be allowed to access the relief funds provided in the CARES Act. Following the trail of evidence, Louisiana Senator: Our Maternal Death Rates Are Only Bad If You Count Black Women, If you correct our population for race, were not as much of an outlier as itdotherwise appear.. So why should they be permitted to raid the federal Treasury in a time of crisis? All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous . Are Crude Oil & Natural Gas Prices Linked? Thats because some of the major investors in private-equity funds are public pension plans; at Blackstone, roughly one-third of the firms money comes from retirement plans set up to provide for over 30 million working-class Americans, according to someone with knowledge of its portfolio. Has its bubble finally burst? NEW YORK Business writers Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera are collaborating on a critical take of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. Previous to her current roles, McLean was an editor-at-large at Fortune Magazine. So the era of low interest rates, which began with former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and continues to this day, has been a huge boon to private-equity firms. According to Dan Rasmussen, the founder of Verdad Advisers, private-equity firms typically double the amount of debt relative to profits on a companys balance sheet. This is late 80s bad, a close observer of the industry says. Beleaguered pension funds, which suffered big losses in the financial crisis, could no longer count on decent returns from fixed investments, given how low interest rates have been kept by the Fed. [citation needed] She began as a contributor to Slate's Moneybox column, in 2010 and "The Bulldog" column in Fortune. (And not all private-equity firms care equally about all of the programs.) In April, the Energy Information Administration cut its forecast for U.S. oil production, estimating that it will fall both this year and next suggesting that the days of huge growth in production from shale are over. Its thanks to those who are able to contribute that were able to make the podcast free for anyone to listen to. NEW YORK (AP) Business writers Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera are collaborating on a critical take of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. Never mind that they often overpaid for the companies they acquired, and loaded them up with so much debt that even a mild economic downturn could make it nearly impossible for those companies to repay their loans, as Fortune put it. How will the virus continue to change? If you need help with the Public File, call 540-512-1558. Actually, no. Private equity has made multibillionaires of executives like Blackstones Steve Schwarzman (net worth: $17.5 billion) and Apollos Leon Black ($7.5 billion). The Wuhan Institute of Virology, the cutting-edge . Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more. Manage all aspects of the daily operation for Ham Conversion, processing up to 1.5 million lbs/day . [12], McLean married Chris Wilford in 2000 and divorced in 2006. Almost everything thats happened since 2008 has tilted in their favor. And North American oil and gas drillers have almost $100 billion of debt that is set to mature in the next four years. [4], In 2005, McLean got into a spat with then-CEO of Overstock.com Patrick M. Byrne after she wrote a negative article about Overstock and him.[5][6]. Previous assignments include editor-at-large, columnist for Fortune, and a contributor to Slate . COVID-19 in McLean County for the week ending 3-3-23 - New Cases (2-23-23 to 3-1-23):129; New Hospitalizations (2-22-23 to 2-28-23):10 ; McLean Countys COVID-19 Community Level is LOW: When Community Level is LOW: Stay up to date on vaccinations, Get tested if you have symptoms. But among those angling for a federal handout is one of the wealthiest sectors of the American economy: private equity. In the Haynesville and the Utica Shales, two major natural gas plays, over half of the drilling is being done by private equity-backed companies; in the oil-rich Permian Basin, its about a quarter of the drilling. Bethany McLean is a . Restaurants and hotels owned by big chains have already received exemptions granting them access to the relief funds, regardless of how many people their parent companies employ. Tens of thousands of Texans are being laid off in the Permian Basin and other parts of the state, and the whole industry is bracing for worse. (This may not surprise anyone who is attempting to be productive while working in close quarters with their children.). Even as the public equity and debt markets grew cautious, drilling continued. Bethany McLean is a Vanity Fair contributing editor. She is the co-author of the 2003 book, "The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron," which was the basis for the Academy Award-nominated documentary of the same name. The title and release date have not yet been determined. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer), (Rick Bowmer, Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. Waters, in her letter, argues for placing even more strings on the money taken by private-equity-backed companies. Americas energy independence was an illusion created by cheap debt. From 2015 through 2019, private equity firms raised almost $80 billion in funds focused mostly on shale production, according to Barclays.
Tdcj Approved Magazines 2021, Articles B